Diversity

At Channel 5 we absolutely get how important diversity is to our organisation and we actively seek to attract individuals from all sections of our community.

We recruit, manage and develop you on the basis of your merits and the requirements of your role, and if you have a disability we will work with you to ensure we make reasonable adjustments.

Viacom UK Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

Channel 5’s parent company, Viacom International Media Networks, has published a Diversity and Inclusion Strategy for its UK operations, giving an overview of the actions it is taking to ensure the people it employs, both directly and indirectly, and the programmes it broadcasts, broadly reflect the wider UK population. A copy of this Strategy can be read here.

Channel 5 Diversity Policy: Commissioning Protocol

Channel 5 aims to reflect the breadth and diversity of UK society in the programmes we commission.

We are also committed to working with others in the television industry to employ a more diverse workforce and to provide many more opportunities for a wide range of people to work in our industry – both in front of and behind the camera.

We expect all production companies with which we work to have in place policies aimed at furthering the diversity of their workforce. We expect such policies to cover recruitment and promotion policies for permanent staff, freelance staff and Interns; and to provide opportunities for underrepresented groups.

In addition, we will seek a series of specific commitments from the people who make programmes for us. In respect of each programme or series we commission, we will require production companies to

1.Complete all information requests for Project Diamond; and ensure sufficient staff have been trained in completing them
2.Discuss with our commissioning editors how the best possible balance of on-screen representation can be achieved
3.Identify a range of potential presenting and on-screen talent appropriate to the commission
4.Provide details of senior production staff who will work on the commission; how they were chosen for those roles; and what steps were taken to ensure people from underrepresented groups were included.

Partnerships

Channel 5 is a member of the Creative Diversity Network’s monitoring initiative, Diamond.

We will be asking you, as a producer of programmes for Channel 5, to enable all on- and off-screen participants in the programmes you make for us to self-report against a range of diversity characteristics – namely gender, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation and gender identity. This information, alongside equivalent data from other participating broadcasters (the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky), will be supplied to the CDN, enabling them to publish regular cross-industry reports on performance.

As a producer for Channel 5, you will have an important role to play in helping us capture this data via the Silvermouse reporting system, which is already in use by the other broadcasters participating in Diamond. You will be responsible for encouraging and enabling all participants in programmes we commission from you to complete a Diversity Self-Declaration Form via Silvermouse, or alternatively to request a self-service form if they do not wish to supply an email address. You will also be responsible for completing a Perceived Diversity Form for each episode of any programme commissioned from you by Channel 5.

For producers who are newcomers to Diamond, Channel 5 would like to start diversity reporting from 1st February. Existing users of Diamond functionality will be able to do so for Channel 5 productions from the 20th January.

Silvermouse is widely used across our industry and you and your staff may already be familiar with it, but we are offering training to any of our suppliers who have not previously used the system or who need a refresher. A link to an online training module can be found here.

For the sake of clarity, while Channel 5 is adopting Silvermouse for its Diamond diversity reporting requirements, we will continue to use existing systems for other reporting requirements, including rights and music clearance. All our post production requirements are accessible via our updated Post Production Paperwork portal here. Please address any queries to the email address above.

As a commercial broadcaster, our success relies on staying relevant to the audiences we serve – that means making sure all our viewers see themselves, their lives and their perspectives reflected back at them when they watch Channel 5. Our goal, therefore, is to broadly reflect the make-up of modern British society in our programmes and in the people we employ both directly and in-directly through the independent production companies we work with.

Radius is a business network and consultancy that believes in the power of intelligent and inclusive connections to help engage, inspire and ultimately motivate individuals and support organisations to drive Diversity & Inclusion to the core of their businesses.